University of Virginia Library

ROSS-SHIRE.

A PSALM OF LOCH DUICH.

All Nature rests: and, save the hidden hum
Of the clear torrent in the grey ravine
Scooping its hollow way, or the low plash
Of peaceful oars across the lucid lake
Bearing their pious freight to morning church,
No sound is heard. No ripple on the face
Of the quaint-winding, mountain-girdled flood
Disturbs the fair composure of the scene:
No vagrant curl of light slow-wandering cloud
Dapples the blue serene; the mellow slopes
Glow with the russet fern; and up the glen
The green-clad cones and piny-tufted crags
In random grandeur cast, with sharp lines cleave
The softness of the rich autumnal air.
Hark! from the base of that green copsy knoll
The gentle call of the familiar bell
Invites the plaided worshippers to join
The sabbath service solemn and severe
Of Presbyterian piety. Go thou
And worship with them, if so be thy heart
Spontaneous rising to the source of Good
Chime with their hymns, and thy well tutored lips
Spell the dread mysteries of their iron creed
With awful pleasure. But if far from these
Thy spirit dwells, then let thy song ascend
Apart, with mine upon the lonely hills:
God numbers not the heads, but weighs the hearts
Of them that worship. Here nor preacher needs
With gusts of studied passion to upstir
The dull heart's stagnant pool, nor with set styles
To train thy finite mind with blind embrace
To clutch the Infinite; all the vasty world
Sublime, the living temple of his power
Invades thy sense, and occupies thy thought.
There have been fools—no void and vacant souls—
But super-subtle self-confounding wits,
Eager to doubt and studious to deny,
Who in the mighty marvel of his works
Owned not the workman; let such pass; but thou
With open eye and reverent-clinging heart
Worship, and with pure homage of consent
Accept his doings. What He is he shews,
And what he shews interpreted becomes
Thy law, and thy religion; thou art bound
By Him as by the chain that bindeth all.
This the unkempt, untutored savage knew
Ere temples rose, or bell did toll to church,
Or stood the mitred priest with hands upreared
Leading the suppliant pomp, or swelled the chaunt
Of the responsive, rich, clear-throated hymn
From lips of white-stoled boys, and maidens chaste,
To sacred service trained. This with his quick
Fair-shaping fancy the old Greek declared,
When every star that gems the lucent blue,
And every ray that paints the dædal globe,
And every wave that crests the heaving brine,
And the streams bickering from a thousand glens,
And every shadow travelling o'er the hills,
Leapt into Godhead's perfect mould, to feed
His eager lust for worship. This in his watch
Star-canopied the Hebrew shepherd knew
With holier instinct and profounder ken;
This the wild hunter in his hairy tent
Lethargic stretched, or with tempestuous foot
Chasing the ostrich. This the holy seer
Saw lonely-brooding upon Judah's hills,
And nursed the sacred thought within his breast,
Till into manhood panoplied it grew,
And spurned his bosom's narrow bound, and strode
Majestic o'er the world, and captive led
The tribes of men, and awed the hearts of kings.
Thus God in every age, and every clime,
Of his unbounded excellence some part
Or aspect, as their faculty might reach,
Dimly revealed, in various feature typed,
To the uncounted children of his love.
And we, who in these latest ages reap
The fullness of the teaching of all times,
Perched on high platforms of far-circling range,
And forcing earth and sky to yield their necks
Obedient to our yoke of lordly thought,
Shall we, with all our knowing craft, know less
Than the embruted bushman of the source
Whence knowledge comes, and all things knowable,
And rather claim low brotherhood with beasts
That with prone faces crop the foodful ground
Thinking no God?—No fellowship with you
True wisdom claims, ye who with fingering ken
Note the bare outward fact, senseless to feel
The soul that moulds the fact, and makes it be
A speechful sign of God, whose thoughts are worlds,
And in whose life all birth and death, and all
The steps of swift mutation, are but stops
In one harmonious all-involving hymn
Of wonder-working energy divine,
Instinct with reason. Not I, with twinkling lamps
Of science groping in disgodded dens
Of cold unreasoned matter love to pry,
Culling the broken shells, and husks of things
Inert and lifeless, but do gladly stray
On the bright surface and familiar face
Of the broad living world, where every beam
From the great centre of all-nurturing light
Shot earthwards, bears upon its procreant wing
Miraculous virtue, at whose touch Earth's slime
Welters with every reasonable form
Of heaving life, and from the conscious ground
Upsprings the flower in every dainty type
Of measured beauty rare, and undulant woods
With leafy large embroidery outspread,
Work of that sleepless surge of shaping soul
That makes the world a world, and fills the eye
With wonder and delight.—But I will cease,
Lest my fond babblement disturb the calm
And beauty of this place; and evermore,
When Sabbath bells in dingy city toll,
Through smoke, and dusty tramp, and rattling wheels,
And multitudinous roar of crowded life,
I will bethink me of thy pool serene,
Loch Duich, with fair fringe of friendly green,
And gleaming cots, and the low plash far-heard
Of peaceful Sabbath oars, and the quaint grace
Of tufted crag, and vagrant-climbing birch,
And lone Glenshiel, with strong rock-scooping flood
Fenced by green cones, and granite peaks sublime.

TAIN: THE CHAPEL OF SAINT DUTHACH.